Testimonial letter from Arwin R. Diwan and O.A. Bushnell
This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.
This letter is from Arwin R. Diwan and O.A. Bushnell. It is "Exhibit A-239" in the Noles collection.
The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.
 University of Hawaii at Manoa To whom it may concern: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, formerly a professor of philosophy at Jabalpur University in India, in our opinion, is the foremost philosopher and spiritual leader alive today. During the past several years he has attracted a large following of professional people, such as physicians, educators, lawyers, clergymen and scientists, largely from the Western Countries. This is due to their exposure to numerous books he has written on interpreting the philosophical and religious traditions of Sages who appeared over time in many countries. His discourses cover, interpret, and enliven aspects of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Zen. His books explain the meaning of existence in contemporary times. His commentary and analysis illuminate the great philosophical traditions of the Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Pythagorus and scientists like Albert Einstein from the West, and Confucius, Lao Tzu and Buddha from the East. In modem times, particularly in western societies, materialism, the fast pace of life, transiency of relationship and widespread litigation have become a part of daily existence. The technological advances in fields such as nuclear energy and biomedicine have made our lives comfortable, but has also created unforeseen problems such as the threat of nuclear holocaust, keeping people alive on machines, etc., thus creating anxiety and making our daily life uncomfortable. In such trying times the books of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh bring a fresh perspective to the meaning of life and the condition of modern man. He provides the awareness of the realities of the spiritual world, and brings contentment and peace of mind to the individual. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh has made a significant contribution to the letters and sciences and we are glad to have discovered him. He has greatly enriched our lives and our work, as well as that of our contemporaries. [signed] |
(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)
